Opinion category, Page 628
Letter to the editor: We need cheap, rapid, over-the-counter covid-19 test
As a Pittsburgh infectious disease physician, I applaud Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina’s covid-19 surveillance approach, which he outlined in a July 3 New York Times opinion piece and at microbe.tv/#640. He endorses a cheap, rapid, over-the-counter covid-19 test. While it will miss some infections, it will be fewer than...
Editorial: Words matter with covid-19 message
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. It’s a good rule of thumb for everyone, but it’s especially important for elected officials. Politicians get — and keep — their jobs by what they say. Their words shape laws and policies. They send us to war and broker peace. In...
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...
Letter to the editor: Plan for safe return to schools
After reading an article about schools resuming in-person classes, I came up with a plan to ensure that students can safely return. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, half of the students and half of the teachers would be in school, and the other half would be in school Thursdays, Fridays...
Letter to the editor: Tax breaks for frackers unacceptable
The fracking and petrochemical industries have been profiting off of making people sick for years, and this is not an outdated trend. In October 2019, it was widely reported that ExxonMobil is scouting to build another cracker plant in Beaver County. Actions like this are unacceptable. The General Assembly just...
Letter to the editor: New St. Vincent archabbot a great choice
It is obvious to me that letter-writer Tom Kerek knows nothing about Archabbot Martin de Porres Bartel (“Numbers guys making the decisions,” Aug. 3, TribLIVE). He is an excellent choice to be archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey. I think having an MBA and a juris doctor might be a good...
Letter to the editor: Peace, respect, work ethic are key
No matter what color the person or uniform, we all matter. It seems the news media does not agree. The death of an innocent person is always a tragedy. If a Black criminal dies by the hand of a white policeman, it is often on the news for months and...
Letter to the editor: Communist threat to America
The United States of America was formed by its Declaration of Independence from tyrannical England. The people wanted to be free to worship God and to live free from dictates of those who ruled. It took a very bloody war of unprecedented sacrifice to accomplish. The greatest document in 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...
Pat Buchanan: For Joe Biden, no men need apply
There is a real possibility that this week Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States. For the woman Biden picks — he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian — has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency...
Editorial: Rivera and Lechman — a tale of two departures
The coronavirus pandemic has created all-hands-on-deck situations in areas like medicine and the economy, government and manufacturing. But we are now staring down a deadline for two arenas: education and elections. So what happens when longtime leaders step away from those responsibilities? On Monday, Westmoreland County officials confirmed elections bureau...
Jonah Goldberg: If mail-in voting will be disaster, why isn’t Trump trying to prevent that?
President Trump’s delay-the-election trial balloon on Twitter last week was resoundingly denounced, and rightly so. Indeed, so thorough was the repudiation, including from top Republicans, that the president backtracked a little. “I don’t want to delay,” Trump explained in a press conference to discuss the pandemic. “I want to have...
Letter to the editor: Science, abortion and Black lives
Being that science and anthropology teach us that human life begins with the first cell (zygote) in the mother’s womb, that makes abortion the beginning of killing Black lives and all lives for that matter. Abortion would then be the beginning of racism and opposition to humanity. We have a...
Letter to the editor: Pa. nursing home data errors alarming
After reading the article “Pa. nursing home data used to track covid-19 deaths, cases riddled with errors” (July 17, TribLIVE), I believe one might legitimately ask if there is some conspiracy afoot to shut down the economy. The Pennsylvania Department of Health showed 76,336 residents at an Elk County nursing...
Letter to the editor: Citizens should be able to vote out bad cops
We the people should have the right to vote out a police officer based on proof that he’s a bad cop. Citizens pay tax dollars to pay officers to protect and serve, and that’s not what’s transpiring in many situations. We the people can vote out mayors, governors, Congress members...
Letter to the editor: Trump diverting our attention from his failures
As covid-19 continues to spiral out of control across the country, President Trump runs ads portraying himself as the “law and order” president. He sends faux-military people without identification and without marked vehicles to nab and detain journalists and protesters from the streets of America, similar to when police in...
Letter to the editor: Done with the NFL
Dear Steelers, It’s not you, it’s me. I am a 62-year-old lifelong Steelers fan. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area. I can tolerate crying, whiny, millionaire players, as that really hasn’t changed in all those years. I can even tolerate supporting a cause I don’t agree with. But I...
Letter to the editor: Media mind control
What do The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC have in common? They all play a big role in determining what Americans see, read, think about and ultimately believe. Sprinkle in lesser-known but still large institutions like Slate, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and HuffPost, and you have...
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...
Tom Purcell: America means freedom to them
A friend of mine can’t for the life of him understand why some Americans are clamoring to replace capitalism with socialism. Born in Vietnam, he was a young boy when he and his family barely escaped that communist nation amid gunfire. America welcomed his family among thousands of Vietnamese refugees....
Editorial: The New Ken-Arnold school board should have seen the severance agreement
The people have a right to know what the government is doing in their name. And how much it’s going to cost them. Last week, the New Kensington-Arnold school board accepted the resignation of superintendent John Pallone. That was followed by a 7-0 vote to accept a severance agreement with...
Editorial: Freedom of press and coronavirus
A pandemic can affect a lot of things. It can change how we work, how kids go to school and how we shop. It can screw up baseball and bingo. It can complicate weddings and funerals. But it doesn’t change the Constitution. It hasn’t changed the freedom of speech of...
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...
Letter to the editor: Babies’ lives matter, too
I keep hearing “lives matter,” and “we need to protect lives,” which are completely true sentiments. No matter how you talk about this issue, someone will absolutely be upset, but here’s the thing: Daily during the virus, babies’ lives didn’t seem to matter. The governor of Pennsylvania did not shut...
Letter to the editor: Climate action in Pa.
Buffeted by a global pandemic, political partisanship and dismay with government gridlock, what can a grandmother do to address the ticking time bomb of climate change? Harkening back to the article “Western Pa. lawmakers fight Gov. Wolf on Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” (Nov. 19, TribLIVE), I reviewed supportive information from...
