Featured Commentary category, Page 81
William Hauk, Lisa Miller and Wayne Au: Is the pandemic over?
President Joe Biden’s declaration that “the pandemic is over” raised eyebrows and the hackles of some experts who think such messaging could be premature and counterproductive. But to many Americans who have long since returned to pre-covid-19 activities and are now being forced back into the office, the remark may...
POINT: Canceling student debt one of many steps needed to restore promise of higher education
The president’s debt cancellation plan will help millions of borrowers who have fallen through the cracks of a broken higher education system. Each year, the federal government makes billions of dollars available in loans to students pursuing a college degree or postsecondary credential. These loans are made under the guise...
COUNTERPOINT: 2 plus 2 make 5 in Biden’s student loan handout
Someone once said that if you torture the data long enough, it will confess. Even still, it is difficult to manipulate the data to the point where you can justify the White House’s student loan handout. Simply put, the numbers do not add up. The claim is that nearly all...
Beth L. Fossen: Name-calling in politics grabs headlines, but voters don’t like it
Spending on political advertising is setting records in the midterm elections. But evidence shows that negative messages might discourage voters from casting ballots altogether. As the 2022 midterms get closer, political attacks in campaign advertisements are on the rise. In November, Rep. Paul Gosar shared an anime cartoon video showing...
Dr. Norbert Goldfield, Dr. Mitch Kaminski and Jeffrey C. Lerner: Voting for the common health of Pa.
The first patient one of us treated as a young internist 45 years ago had been refused care by another physician because his insurance had expired. The man cried. He hasn’t been forgotten. Scenes like this were more common at one time. Today, millions of patients are spared humiliation and...
Carlos A. Suárez Carrasquillo and Fernando Tormos-Aponte : Puerto Rico’s vulnerability to hurricanes magnified by weak government, bureaucratic roadblocks
EDITOR’S NOTE: Five years after Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona has killed at least four people, caused widespread flooding and left hundreds of thousands of residents without water or power. Maria caused extensive damage to Puerto Rico’s power grid in 2017 that left many residents without...
Sascha Meinrath: National broadband rollout has blind spot: Lack of accurate, transparent data about internet access speeds
Imagine purchasing “up to” a gallon of milk for $4.50, or paying for “up to” a full tank of gas. Most people would view such transactions as absurd. And yet, in the realm of broadband service, the use of “up to” speeds has become standard business practice. Unlike other advertisements...
Nicholas Creel: Why the red wave is becoming a red ripple
Republicans are increasingly finding themselves in danger of seeing what should have been an epic red wave falter into a pathetic red ripple, or worse, a Democratic gain in Congress. While it may be tempting to point to the recent spate of legislative and policy wins by Democrats as the...
Peter Morici: U.S. must take lead on globalization to compete with China
Global commerce is being rearranged by Western sanctions on Russia, covid inspired hardening of supply chains and Western apprehensions about China, but none of this spells the end of globalization. It merely heightens the competition between the United States and China about who will lead. The process will disrupt the...
Stephen Herzenberg: Union growth offers greater promise to workers
This week, clean energy leaders from around the world will gather here in Pittsburgh for a critical dialogue on how to address climate change but also improve jobs. Their choice of Pittsburgh for this unique gathering is not a coincidence: Opportunities for workers in the Steel City and all of...
David Dzombak and Tom Batroney: The Clean Water Act at 50
On Oct. 18, 1972, Congress enacted in a bipartisan manner the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972, also known as the Clean Water Act (CWA). Prior to the CWA, clean-water laws at the federal and state levels were inconsistent, and progress was slow in cleaning up our nation’s water,...
David McKenzie: Community solar could ease economic pressures
Election season always brings discussion about the issues that are most important to Pennsylvanians. The economy is at the top of the list, with inflation and high energy prices hitting wallets hard. One solution that checks all the boxes on these economic concerns is community solar. Senate Bill 472 and...
Paul Muschick: Catholic church sex abuse victims deserve justice. Don’t let the election interfere.
A few weeks ago, Gov. Tom Wolf and legislative leaders announced they had reached a bipartisan agreement to finish the long overdue job of giving long ago victims of child sex abuse an opportunity to seek justice. Let’s just hope their pledge is honored after November’s midterm election. Nothing ever...
Margaret Zylka House: Running in her shoes
The past few weeks have been hard for the running community, a community of over 60 million Americans, as we bear the heartbreaking loss of Eliza Fletcher, who was abducted and killed while on an early-morning run in Memphis. I began running more than 30 years ago in the sixth...
Counterpoint: Let’s cut the military budget, just don’t call it ‘defund’
There is an excellent argument that the “defund” trope has become so politicized that it now gets in the way of, rather than advances, policy advocacy of any stripe. But that doesn’t mean we should reflexively dismiss the underlying idea that government funds should be shifted away from wasteful or...
Point: We should reform, not defund, necessary institutions
Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. While Newton was describing this phenomenon in relation to physics, the basic principle also applies to society in general. For instance, after the death of George Floyd in 2020, many municipalities...
Peter Morici: Biden’s green energy subsidies will boost inflation, distort investment
Democrats can head into the midterms touting the CHIPS Act and new green-energy and health-care legislation, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, but these forays into industrial policy will likely stoke inflation and distort capital investment. As passed, the IRA should increase revenue and reduce Medicare drug spending by $767 billion...
Cal Thomas: Another Irish exodus
DUBLIN — Americans are not the only ones suffering from high fuel and food prices, along with rapidly increasing costs for housing and rising mortgage rates. The Irish, too, are experiencing a similar economic squeeze, but unlike Americans who can reduce financial pressures and move to states with no state...
Michael Butler: Shell ethylene cracker complex shows value of never giving up
The French writer Victor Hugo once called perseverance “the secret of all triumphs.” Those words came to mind as I read that Shell this year expects to open its estimated $10 billion ethylene cracker complex in Beaver County outside Pittsburgh. It’s been a decade since the company announced the site...
Patrick Beaty: Pa. voters deserve all the facts on proposed constitutional amendments
Earlier this summer, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Elections posted a notice on its website about six proposed constitutional amendments approved by the General Assembly in its 2021-22 session. As our Constitution requires, the Elections Bureau then sent this official notice to newspapers across the commonwealth so it could be published...
Dennis Roddy: Dead monarch a hit in London
LONDON — Life might be for the living, but death is enjoying a renaissance here. People are lining up for miles to stare at the queen’s coffin and be inspired. The late queen’s utterances, calculatedly unremarkable in life, are imbued by commentators with a Lincolnesque aura. This is dangerous. The...
John Eckenrode: Pa.’s state prison staffing crisis shows no sign of ending
Pennsylvanians are getting back to work. The economy is on the rebound. Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate is now lower than its pre-pandemic level. That’s great news, but not for everyone, including those who work some of the most dangerous jobs in the commonwealth. Right now, the commonwealth’s prison system continues to...
Veronika Dolar: Does raising the minimum wage kill jobs?
California’s new fast-food law is expected to lead to a higher minimum wage for the industry in the state — as high as $22 in 2023, up from $15 as of September 2022. While backers say the law is necessary to ensure fair wages and treatment in California’s fast-food industry,...
Dennis Roddy: Queen’s death sends Britain into muted mourning
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth’s death came off flawlessly, a passing anticipated for so long that it was code-named for a landmark the British sold to a wealthy American who moved it to Arizona and turned it into a tourist attraction 50 years ago. London Bridge still stands, albeit in Arizona....
Steve Corbin: Citizens are united and legislators don’t represent us
According to the most recent data from Pew Research Center, National Election Studies, Gallup, ABC/The Washington Post, CBS/New York Times and CNN polls, only one-fifth of Americans say they trust the federal government to do what is right. The June 12 headline from a NBC News article sums it up:...
