Opinion category, Page 702
Editorial: 2020 promises wild ride
If 2019 seemed like a roller coaster, hurtling to the peak of one local, state, national or global event after another before veering wildly off in a different direction or plunging down to an unsatisfying resolution, well, buckle your seat belts, keep your hands and arms inside the car at...
Letter to the editor: Lawmakers’ pay increase
Where would all the mediocre lawyers go for an increase in their standard of living if not into politics? Clem Zahrobsky Delmont...
Letter to the editor: Senate leaders not following Constitution
I was slightly misquoted in your story “Westmoreland County impeachment rally draws more than 100” (Dec. 17, TribLIVE) — an easy mistake to make on a cold and snowy street corner with car horns blaring in the background. Regarding the Congress, I didn’t observe, “They’ve said out loud they’re not...
Letter to the editor: We need a cleansing of Congress
Regarding the article “Report: U.S. misled public on progress in Afghanistan war”: Congress on both sides of the aisle should be ashamed of themselves and seriously consider resigning from office or not running for reelection. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell and Jim Sensenbrenner, along with the rest of the...
Tom Purcell: Don’t take cyber scammers’ bait in 2020
One of 2019’s biggest stories will be bigger in 2020: Cyber scams are on the rise. “As people increasingly conduct business and live their lives online, more and more criminals are leveraging the internet to steal,” reports Forbes’ Stu Sjouwerman. The dirty rotten scammers continue to evolve, too, targeting businesses,...
Jonah Goldberg: If this has been super-decade, why are we still so angry?
There is a strong case to be made that things are getting better. In 2010, Matt Ridley made the case in “The Rational Optimist” that things were better than they appeared. Writing in The Spectator, on the cusp of 2020, Ridley offers an update: We’re finishing the best decade in...
Editorial: The rear-view mirror of 2019
There is a tendency to look back on the past year with nostalgia or to draw a curtain while marching fiercely into the upcoming year with hopes and plans for better. Take a quick scroll through your phone or click around your favorite television stations and you’ll probably be confronted...
Letter to the editor: Anti-Trump protest not front-page news
One hundred never-Trumpers at a “rally” makes front-page news with a photo spread (“Westmoreland County impeachment rally draws more than 100,” Dec. 17, TribLIVE)! I’ve seen more people “protesting” at a school board meeting over moving a bus stop. Come on, Trib. Bob Goehring North Huntingdon...
Letter to the editor: Nadler & cronies dictators
President Trump “put himself before country” and lawmakers “cannot wait until the next election to address the threat” posed by his actions. These are comforting words to the plebs from the Honorable Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary. The benevolent chair and his cronies are looking...
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Dec. 30
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Dec. 30....
Letter to the editor: Trump’s put-down of Thunberg shameful
Amid the thousands of Donald Trump’s tweets, rally rants and “whiny” letters, e.g. recently to Nancy Pelosi, one episode stands out: the recent contretemps vis-a-vis Greta Thunberg. This reveals the reality of Trump’s character in all its smallness. Greta Thunberg, 16, is a Swedish climate activist diagnosed with Asperger syndrome...
Editorial cartoons for the week of Dec. 30
Editorial cartoons for the week of Dec. 30....
Elizabeth Holtzman: Senate trial must produce more evidence to determine Trump’s guilt
House and Senate Republicans are vociferously denouncing Sen. Chuck Schumer’s sensible request that four likely eyewitnesses to President Trump’s Ukraine actions testify in the Senate impeachment trial. They say the request for witnesses shows the House did not do a thorough job in its impeachment inquiry. It should have obtained...
Peter Morici: How tribalism corrupts our democracy
My grandfather, a buttonhole maker, believed his first responsibility was to be a provider. His union supported that role and the Democratic Party was the workingman’s champion. Some New Deal policies benefited him, but with a grade-school education, I doubt he ever gave great thought to how fair trade laws...
Editorial: Police take bite out of hoagie market
Hoagies are not a substitute for money. A big long bun stuffed with ham and cheese and veggies is not supposed to take the place of cold hard cash. But for school groups and service organizations and nonprofits in need, a hoagie can be the preferred route to building up...
Letter to the editor: What’s happened to our country?
What has happened to this wonderful country of ours? Didn’t we come here to get away from dictators? Where we are free to believe as we wish? If I own a company and I don’t like the color blue and I tell my employees, “I don’t wish to see blue...
Letter to the editor: Presidential candidates should recuse selves
Apparently people are unaware of our system of government. One party cannot railroad a president who has not broken a law out of office. The Democrats are avoiding the judicial branch in their effort to get rid of President Trump. Many people think that Congress voting to impeach means he...
Letter to the editor: Indifference may end our republic
The end of an empire slowly creeps in unawares. It’s like a chronic case of indigestion repeatedly ignored until it’s diagnosed as stage 4 stomach cancer. And the prognosis for America the Beautiful could be terminal. Generations indoctrinated by a lifetime of the blue glow of television have been rendered...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Political endings & beginnings in 2020
Every now and then a new year seems sure to mark significant change. And 2020 is one of those years — a presidential election year — and it is not without some meaningless controversy straight out of the gate. Astronomer Joe Rao writes in the Farmers’ Almanac that we should...
James Thrasher: Division I athletics all about the money
During an episode of Lebron James’ online show “The Shop,” California Gov. Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill allowing California student athletes to sign endorsements while in college. The NCAA Board of Governors, having studied this issue for years, responded by announcing that college athletes can “benefit from the...
Lawrence McCullough: Educational theater boosts STEM with STEAM
The first email I opened this morning notified me I’d just put a little more STEAM into the world. An ecology play I’d written some years back had been licensed by a science teacher at Our Lady Help of Christians School in Victoria, Australia. Using class students as performers, “Home...
Colin McNickle: Beef up ‘Local Share’ gambling dollars reporting
“Pursue your happiness,” read the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” interstate border signs. But “Pursue some transparency” would be a better slogan considering the commonwealth’s spotty record of holding accountable how some recipients of gambling taxes spend that money, finds an analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. Keystone State gambling...
Sounding off: Our politicians should all be independents
George Washington warned Americans about the evils of political parties and partisan politics in his Farewell Address to Congress. When I ran as a Libertarian candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, I did so because I saw how the two major parties and partisan politics were destroying our country,...
Editorial: Are turnpike spikes toll road to ruin?
Brother, can you spare a dime? Well, that will work if you have an E-ZPass, but if you don’t, how about two, because that’s how much tolls are going up. Yes, again. No one can possibly be surprised. We have all seen this coming for years. For twelve straight years,...
Letter to the editor: ‘Investing in children’ means more taxes
Property owners in New Kensington-Arnold School District should be seeing red (“New Kensington-Arnold preliminary budget spikes taxes, exhausts reserves,” Dec. 12, TribLIVE): They are being bled to death in school taxes. Ask the school board: How much did the football field renovation cost? How much money in the budget went...
