Editorials category, Page 85
Editorial: Helping victims helps us all
If you get hurt, you should get help. That’s more than common sense. It is the idea behind so much of the government we support. It is why we have firefighters and police officers, paramedics and hospitals, emergency management agencies and the National Guard. As a society, we are prepared...
Editorial: Special Olympics are exceptionalVideo
There are lots of ways to define the word “special.” There is distinct. There is different. There is “exceptionally good or precious.” All of those could apply to the Special Olympics. The Pennsylvania Winter Games were held at Seven Springs Ski Lodge Sunday through Tuesday. Every four years, the Olympic...
Editorial: Retire in Pittsburgh with $1 million?
Sometimes it isn’t how much money you’ve got. It’s how you’re going to spend it. Last week, SmartAsset released its third annual study showing how long a $1 million retirement nest egg would last in various U.S. cities. In Pittsburgh, you can stretch that pot of money to cover 23.14...
Editorial: Pick up after yourself, Pennsylvania
At home, if you don’t like how much your monthly bills are, you can cut back. Eat out less. Switch phone plans. Shut off unneeded lights and close the front door because, as parents say, you don’t have to heat the whole outdoors! But when it comes to taxes, that’s...
Editorial: Religion, speech free of fear
Sometimes it is the fear of something that causes more problems than the “something” itself. Anticipating a needle can be worse than the quick sting of a shot. And so it can be with prayer in schools. The First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom and the constitutional separation of church...
Editorial: Tranquilli and the scales of justice
The law is more than letters on a page. It isn’t just a static thing that exists flatly in tiny print in thick books. The law is a tool — a mechanism for weighing and measuring people in a way that has nothing to do with pounds or inches. And...
Laurels & lances: Bakers, groundhog, culture and taxes
Laurel: To a nourishing idea. Chatham University is creating a new baker training program that brings together its Center for Regional Agriculture, Food and Transformation with Community Kitchen Pittsburgh. Funded by a $215,000 grant from Bank of America, the pilot program launches in May and will allow students to earn...
Editorial: Will Wolf budget become impasse?
There was an important speech made Tuesday that is worth some attention. No, not the one in Washington that has spawned a million social media posts. It’s the one Gov. Tom Wolf gave in Harrisburg, outlining his 2020-21 budget proposal. For Pennsylvanians, it was a laundry list of priorities the...
Editorial: Iowa owes Pennsylvania better
The Iowa Democratic Party doesn’t just owe it to the people who participate in its highly-touted, first-in-the-country caucus every four years to figure out how to correct its problems. It owes it to the rest of us, too. On Tuesday, the Hawkeye State’s caucuses — a kind of Thanksgiving-table survey...
Editorial: Public schools and private info
Privacy and a public job are often at odds. Take a job with a government agency, and you are answerable to everyone. More than that, everyone feels a little bit (or a lot) entitled to ask questions about your job, your paycheck, your hours and exactly why you were hired....
Editorial: Where do bright ideas come from?
The visual representation of a good idea is usually a light bulb. Since Thomas Edison’s popular invention was, in itself, a stroke of inspiration, it seems apropos. It’s the symbol that is instantly recognizable in cartoons and comic strips. It doesn’t require a word to convey an idea. But it’s...
Editorial: Coronavirus is not alone
Every sniffle is starting to make people wonder about the latest looming monster. Coronavirus. Specifically, it is Wuhan coronavirus, a novel variety of a large family of viruses that include the hundreds of microscopic bugs that cause what we affectionately call “the common cold.” But nobody is afraid of a...
Editorial: Open records, not open identity info
Newspapers are big fans of open records. We want to be able to find out what our government and public entities are doing. What did they buy? What did they spend? Where did the money come from? Who did something wrong? How was it punished? How was it corrected? What...
Laurels & lances: Out of the box and in the pool
Laurel: To wacky new ideas. Hey, maybe Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s thoughts about gondolas connecting the Strip, the Hill District and Oakland is a little out there. Or maybe it’s up there? But give credit where credit is due. It’s definitely something new and different. The idea isn’t about the...
Editorial: Who should pick the Lt. Gov.?
Elect a president and you get his running mate, too. It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free offer. You don’t get to split the deck. You don’t get to take George H.W. Bush but swap Dan Quayle for Newt Gingrich. You don’t get Jimmy Carter without Walter Mondale. It’s all or nothing. With...
Editorial: Hazing can’t be dismissed
Hazing can be easy to dismiss as a common team-building activity, or even a comic exercise. It isn’t. Hazing is that time-honored practice of taking new members of an organization and putting them through a series of ritualized tests or torments. It might be beatings or degrading psychological abuse. It...
Editorial: DUI is deadly serious
How serious does a crime have to be in order to be considered a “serious crime”? In a precedent-setting opinion delivered this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called a Montgomery County man’s DUI a grave enough offense to preclude him from buying a gun. Raymond Holloway Jr....
Editorial: Marketing message money well spent
There is a lot that goes into altering the way a community is seen. There can be problems to fix. There can be changes to make. There can be new paths to follow. But there is also the message that needs to be spread. Hey, we’re still here! Things are...
Editorial: Literacy can be more than reading
When people think about literacy, they tend to think about the obvious. Can you read? Can you write? Can you navigate the written word enough to make it through your daily life, weaving around street signs and menus and bills and notes from your kid’s teacher? All of that is...
Editorial: Learning about campus sex assault
There are things you need to go to college to learn. How to design a skyscraper. How to perform brain surgery. How to split atoms. There are things you shouldn’t have to learn in college. Like how to keep your hands to yourself. That’s more of a kindergarten thing. Nonetheless,...
Laurels & lances: Cookies, phishing, kidney and overtime
Laurel: To aiming high. The 2.36 million boxes of Girl Scout cookies sold each year averages out to about 150 boxes per scout. But Stella VanWhy, 6, of Arnold thought she could sell 2,020 boxes this year. Her leader suggested something more realistic, so the Daisy Scout came up with...
Editorial: Hempfield still has issues to address
Hempfield Area School District’s residential tax assessment appeals program will be ending. Eventually. On Monday, the board voted 7-2 to discontinue the broadly criticized program that served as a back-door reassessment for properties with a $250,000 difference between fair market value and selling price, as calculated by district-hired law firm...
Editorial: The black and white of guns
It is easy to paint any issue in pure, unyielding black and white. Abortion. Environment. Poverty. Health care. Energy. Immigration. Taxes. Everything can boil down to pro or con. But is that accurate? Almost never. Let’s look at guns. Pennsylvania is often tagged as a gun-friendly state. It’s hard to...
Editorial: FDA should scrub in on recall
There are things that are done with an abundance of trust — things done with the belief that they are safe. Like surgery. When going into an operating room, people are vulnerable. They know things can go wrong, but they also trust everything that can be done to ensure it...
Editorial: Reaching for the dream
There once was a man who had a dream. He stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He looked back 100 years to a great day in American history and spoke about how far we have come, but he also...
