Featured Commentary category, Page 49
Dwan B. Walker: Communities depend on banks to invest in infrastructure
Aliquippa is the place where I grew up, attended school and raised my family. Eventually, it was the place that granted me the humbling opportunity to become mayor, a role I’ve served in for the last 12 years. It’s safe to say Aliquippa is a community I care about deeply....
Christine Flowers: Not even the death of a mother is off limits in today’s politics
There are two things that should be completely off limits: a person’s children and a person’s grief. You do not mock a child, something that we often forget when that child happens to belong to a politician we despise, and you do not make fun of someone in the depths...
Peter Morici: How to help American families afford child care? Give parents money directly
Last September, covid-era federal subsidies to child-care providers ended. Despite apocalyptic warnings that 70,000 daycare centers would shutter, compelling at least one parent, usually mothers, to stay-at-home, American families have so far muddled through. The female labor force participation rate, which has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, did not collapse. Importantly,...
Carl P. Leubsdorf: Haley still has a chance in New Hampshire
Though Donald Trump scored a historically large victory, Nikki Haley’s close third in the Iowa caucuses keeps alive her scenario of how the Republican primaries might shift in her favor, starting next week in New Hampshire. “You know Iowa starts it,” the former South Carolina governor told Granite State supporters...
Cal Thomas: GOP, where is the noble rhetoric?
“Donald, you’re not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency. That’s not going to happen.” — Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush during a 2016 debate with Trump. After watching too many of the Republican non-debates and the insults each of the candidates (and former candidates) have...
Sally C. Pipes: Medicaid should not be for middle class
America is aging. Between now and 2050, the number of people older than 64 will increase by more than half, to 86 million. Nineteen million of those seniors will be older than 84. That means demand for long-term care will grow. Residential care with nursing coverage can cost more than...
Willie Wilson: Black elected leaders have an obligation to fulfill the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream
As we honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday today with a federal holiday, there will be programs, pageantry and celebrations for a man who expressed a powerful dream in 1963. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial But that dream remains largely unfulfilled. King’s dream was one of...
Michael Reagan: Stop debating with yourselves, Republicans
I heard there was another Republican presidential debate. I didn’t watch it — I’ve suffered enough, thanks. I don’t care how few political masochists tuned in to CNN last Wednesday night to watch Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis engage in another meaningless debate. I don’t care who the big-shot media...
‘Finally at peace’: Remembering Hannah Kunkel, whose pediatric cancer battle was chronicled by the Trib
Hannah Kunkel lived knowing full well that her life could be cut short at any moment. At age 5, she was diagnosed with a rare, ruthless type of brain cancer that killed every child who ever got it. Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh told her parents that Hannah would...
Nickolaus Hayes: Why Dry January is good for your health
Dry January — abstaining from alcohol for the entirety of the first month of the year — has significant benefits for physical and mental health. It also prevents impaired driving and helps people reevaluate their drinking habits. Social drinking during the holiday season is widely accepted, generally seen as a...
Robin Abcarian: With every release of court documents, the damage Jeffrey Epstein did confronts us anew
I could live the rest of my life happily without being reminded of Jeffrey Epstein, his yearslong exploitation of young women or the many famous male moths who were drawn to the billionaire’s flame. I’m sure his emotionally scarred victims wish they could, too. Recent news developments, unfortunately, make the...
Jason W. Park: Timing of mass shootings offers clue to possible deterrence
Yet another senseless tragedy has occurred, the latest at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. A school shooting leaving one dead and five wounded starts 2024 inauspiciously. However, we need more than “thoughts and prayers.” We all demand — and deserve — action. Rather than asking why this happened, let...
Freedom, democracy are here to stay — reflections on politics in 2024
It’s winter: dark, dreary and cold. There is a palpable feeling of dread in America as we face the upcoming 2024 political season. Pundits wonder why everyone is so grumpy. Positive economic news fails to change the national mood or lift the electoral prospects of President Joe Biden. We are...
Rep. Rob Mercuri: America’s largest full-time legislature should not be its least productive
As the new year begins, Pennsylvania’s state Legislature, the nation’s largest and one of its most expensive full-time legislative bodies, needs to make a New Year’s resolution for 2024 — to earn a return on the investment of the taxpayers whom they were elected to serve. Over the course of...
Jonathan Rothermel: Can a single, 6-year presidential term save us from ourselves?
The 2024 presidential primary season officially begins in just a few weeks, but former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the polls of likely Republican primary voters and President Joe Biden’s absence of a Democratic challenger appear to destine a repeat of the 2020 election. The most innovative country in...
Counterpoint: Jan. 6 was a protest and riot — not an insurrection
On Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was preparing to certify officially the results of the 2020 presidential election, a melee took place at the nation’s capital, temporarily stalling the certification process. Later that evening, after the calm was restored, the Electoral College votes were cast, paving the way for another...
Point: Confronting the stain of an insurrection on American democracy
The chaos and fear wrought by the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, still stings fresh in the minds of millions of Americans — and particularly mine, as someone who served as a congressional staffer that day. But, as a country, I don’t think we’ve adequately grappled with the gravity of...
Daniel DePetris: Is the Middle East in danger of spinning out of control?
There is only so much a single person can do to control the events around them. Joe Biden is learning in real time that one of life’s golden rules also applies to the president of the United States. Despite holding the most powerful position in the world, Biden is finding...
Peter Morici: Bad news for Biden — Americans feel worse about the economy than they should
The U.S. economy has recovered from the covid pandemic reasonably well, yet President Joe Biden is getting little credit and could even lose his job in 2024. Third-quarter GDP growth scored at 4.9%; the Federal Reserve has enjoyed considerable success pulling down inflation. Jobs are plentiful, and the misery index...
Cal Thomas: President Gay is a symptom, not the cause
The resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay after “facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work” does not solve the problem at America’s oldest college and other elite schools. She and many other university presidents are only a...
Vanessa Lynch: Celebrating EPA’s new oil and gas safeguards
Clean air advocates — and those of us living in front-line oil and gas communities — have something to celebrate as we start a new year. New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safeguards are poised to significantly slash methane pollution from the oil and gas industry. Parents across Pennsylvania are ecstatic....
Chris Heck: Bipartisan hope to protect Medicare
In the complex and often contentious world of health care policy, a glimmer of hope has emerged on the horizon. A bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives has taken a stand to protect Medicare from looming cuts to physician compensation. The introduction of House Resolution 6683...
Elwood Watson: Generation X is almost 60
Latchkey kids. Slackers. Caffeine lovers. Grunge. That’s how a lot of people have referred to Generation X, the 46 million Americans, like myself, who were born between 1965 and 1980. We were a generation that has been perennially pegged as cynical, self-indulgent, aimless, contrarian and often peripheral when it comes...
Noah Feldman: The New York Times has an edge in suit against OpenAI
The lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement pits one of the great establishment media institutions against the purveyor of a transformative new technology. Symbolically, the case promises a clash of the titans: labor-intensive human newsgathering against pushbutton information produced by artificial intelligence....
Jason Opal: Even as American colonists defied the British, they understood the importance of the rule of law
The dominant storyline of our American Revolution is about patriotic defiance — refusing to pay taxes, dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and shooting redcoats once we saw the whites of their eyes. It’s about virtuous lawbreaking in the name of freedom. There is plenty of evidence to support this...
