Opinion category, Page 326
Letter to the editor: Lest we forget — Apollo Police Officer Leonard C. Miller
Apollo police Officer Leonard C. Miller was a distinguished graduate of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Police Academy. He began his full-time tour of duty Jan. 1, 1980. Miller, the first Black police officer for Apollo, was killed at age 21 in the line of duty on Jan. 3, 1980....
Tom Purcell: The regrettable return of earmarks
Earmarks are back and they’re costing American taxpayers a bundle. In case you’ve forgotten, earmarks, says FactCheck.org, “are government funds that are allocated by a legislator for a particular pet project, often without proper review.” Often attached to the 12 large appropriation bills that Congress by law is supposed to...
Dick Polman: George Santos and the normalization of bald-faced lies
Decades ago, Holocaust scholar Hannah Arendt warned: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, i.e., the reality of experience and the distinction between true and false, i.e., the standards of thought, no...
Cal Thomas: A new year but nothing new
People speak of a new year as turning the page, or starting out fresh, or forgetting the past. At the start of a new year, I like to look back a century ago to see what has changed and what hasn’t. In 1923, America had finally recovered from the Spanish...
Letter to the editor: Look in the mirror and make a change
To whomever cares to read and adhere: In order to make this world a better place, we all have to change in some form. It has to be an individual’s change before it can become corporate. It can be hate, selfishness, envy, pride or just plain meanness. I say that...
Letter to the editor: Where are the workers? They’re gone.
The writer of the letter “Where are all the workers?” (Nov. 28, TribLIVE) suggested Americans don’t want to work. The simple answer is that the pool of eligible workers is maxed out. As of November 2022, the number of people employed was approximately 160 million, which is at or above...
Editorial: Address suicide by respecting mental health
It is always hard to lose a loved one. Whether it happens because of disease or accident or criminal act, death is a gut punch. It hits hard and deep. It is aching and empty. When the loss is self-inflicted, it leaves something else behind. Families and friends can struggle...
Letter to the editor: Two-party system failing
Our two-party democracy is not working! The U.S. economy for middle-income Americans is hanging by a thread with the rate of inflation of food, housing, utilities and fuels at 42-year highs. Stock market retirement savings are down about 25%, and federal spending and debt are at massive high levels. The...
Editorial cartoons for the week of Jan. 2
Editorial cartoons for the week of Jan. 2....
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Jan. 1
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of Jan. 2....
Ray Lombardi, Angela Antipova and Dorian J. Burnette: Record low water levels on the Mississippi River in 2022 show how climate change is altering large rivers
Rivers are critical corridors that connect cities and ecosystems alike. When drought develops, water levels fall, making river navigation harder and more expensive. In 2022, water levels in some of the world’s largest rivers, including the Rhine in Europe and the Yangtze in China, fell to historically low levels. The...
Michael Reagan: Ukraine is America’s latest stalemate war
We don’t fight our wars to win anymore. We fight them to get to a stalemate. We’ve risked untold lives and wasted trillions of dollars to poorly fight wars for decades in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and Vietnam. Then we negotiate and leave. And then the countries where we...
Rachel Kyte: How Putin’s war and small islands are accelerating the global shift to clean energy, and what to watch for in 2023
The year 2022 was a tough one for the growing number of people living in food insecurity and energy poverty around the world, and the beginning of 2023 is looking bleak. Russia’s war on Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain and fertilizer feedstock suppliers, tightened global food and energy...
Letter to the editor: Don’t judge Robert E. Lee by 2022 standards
West Point just removed artwork of Robert E. Lee, who as a cadet received no demerits. Later, Lee was the commandant of West Point. Lee was offered to be the leader in command of the entire U.S. Army in the field at the beginning of the Civil War, but Lee...
Sounding off: Franco, new year, cold weather, pay raises topics of interest this week
Thank you, Franco If you spent any significant amount of time in Pittsburgh over the past several decades, you were bound to occasionally run into Franco Harris. About 10 years ago, a small group of us were excited because there was a rare day that the Pirates and Steelers (albeit...
Letter to the editor: Wishes for the new year
As the holiday season starts to wind down, I have had a moment or two to reflect on many things. The Mrs. and I again this year were blessed to be able to stand in for the man in the red suit. The pure joy for us to share this...
Letter to the editor: Thank you, Franco
If you spent any significant amount of time in Pittsburgh over the past several decades, you were bound to occasionally run into Franco Harris. About 10 years ago, a small group of us were excited because there was a rare day that the Pirates and Steelers (albeit only a preseason...
Editorial: The to-do list for 2023
As the clock runs out on 2022, we say goodbye to a year that has been jam-packed with significant events from the start. The pandemic was still going on. There were booster shots and new variants to address. The midterm elections made Pennsylvania a focal point for politics. The U.S....
Greg Fulton: 50 years later, remembering the greatest Pirate of them all
On Sept. 30, 1972, Roberto Clemente in his last at bat as a Pittsburgh Pirate stroked his 3,000th hit, an accomplishment achieved by only 33 players in baseball history. Sadly, three months later, Roberto Clemente, the greatest Pirate of them all, would be dead at age 38. On New Year’s...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: The good and the bad from 2022
“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves,” according to the late William E. Vaughan, author and longtime columnist for the Kansas City Star. It is never that simple. There are always some bad things...
Danny Tyree: Thoughts on the ‘bomb cyclone’
I won’t hazard a guess as to whether it achieves immortality like “grassy knoll” or “hanging chads,” but surely the phrase “bomb cyclone storm” will remain in the public consciousness of those who endured its cruelties. We’ll laugh about this someday, but right now an awful lot of Americans have...
S.E. Cupp: The year ahead and what people resolve to do
While covid-19 thankfully waned in the U.S. and many of us felt a slow return to normalcy, 2022 was still an eventful year. From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the death of Queen Elizabeth, the overturning of Roe v. Wade to midterm elections, the rise in inflation to the collapse...
Carl P. Leubsdorf: Some not-so-serious 2023 predictions
Last year’s column successfully predicted Democratic Senate gains and a smaller-than-expected Republican House takeover. Here is our not-totally-serious forecast for 2023: JANUARY: Rep. Kevin McCarthy falls six votes short of 218 in House speaker election as 10 Freedom Caucus members vote for challenger Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs. As deadlock persists,...
Bloomberg editors: Thanks to FTX, regulating crypto should be easy
As the demise of the FTX crypto empire unfolds — on Twitter, in bankruptcy proceedings, in congressional hearings and potentially in criminal court — lawmakers and regulators are grappling with a question: What, if anything, should they do to civilise a market so rife with abuse? A few simple fixes...
Letter to the editor: PennDOT should take better care of Routes 88, 837
To PennDOT: I have lived in Washington County for almost six years. There has not been one winter that I can say that you have kept Routes 88 and 837 clear or even passably safe through Monongahela to Bethel Park or to West Elizabeth, and surrounding Valley routes. Don’t use...
