Featured Commentary category, Page 109

Pennsylvania collected the highest total impact fees ever in 2018, fueled in part by a court ruling but paced largely by increased demand for shale gas, concludes a review of state data by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. Act 13 of 2012 (with collections retroactive to 2011) instituted the...

Gov. Tom Wolf recently signed House Bill 1172 — which allows workers who hold occupational licenses from other states to use them in Pennsylvania — into law. Individuals will still need to pay licensing fees and have at least two years of relevant experience, but it will soon become much...

Bob Bauder’s article “Strip District development will push into the North Side, officials say” (July 5, TribLIVE) brings attention to redevelopment opportunities on the North Side, specifically along the banks of the Allegheny River and the area surrounding the old Heinz plant. The article serves as a reminder that North...

No matter what happens in the headlines or the halls of Congress, the first steps in resolving America’s burning social questions have historically occurred after years of debate and disputation in our houses of worship. The last 200 years have seen landmark deliberations ensue on slavery, temperance, evolution, LGBTQ inclusion,...

Years ago, it was hard to be a racist. You had to be fitted for and spend money on a white gown and don a pointy hat. You celebrated racism by getting some burlap, wrapping it around a cross, setting it ablaze and dancing around it carrying torches. Sometimes, as...

Never before have presidential candidates offered voters so much “free” stuff. Kamala Harris wants you to “collect up to $500 a month.” No one has tracked the cost of all of the promises. So my video team did! Who will spend the most? Here are the new spending proposals from...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., won applause during Tuesday’s presidential debate with this proclamation: “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.” Were I on that stage, here’s...

As the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it risks falling victim to its own dominance. For too long, the Fed has been a monastery where 2% inflation, 2% trend growth and the primacy of conventional banking are accepted without sound foundation. The Fed targets 2% inflation as a compromise between...

Pennsylvania is home to hundreds of student nurse anesthetists, yet Pennsylvania is one of just two states that fail to officially recognize CRNAs in some form. Because there is no “certified registered nurse anesthetist” title under the state’s Professional Nursing Law, CRNAs are recognized only as registered nurses, not as...

The Democrats who were looking to cast Robert Mueller as the star in a TV special, “The Impeachment of Donald Trump,” can probably tear up the script. They’re gonna be needing a new one. For six hours last Wednesday, as three cable news networks and ABC, CBS and NBC all...

The renowned artist of the 1600s, Rembrandt, remains famous for capturing emotions and dramatic personal reactions of his subjects. In many of his paintings he displays light emerging from darkness, a sort of victory over the struggles and difficulties of life. Rembrandt serves as a model of determination, courage and...

I want to put in a good word for partisanship. This might sound strange to some readers. I’ve written a lot about our problem with tribalism, including hyper-partisanship and political polarization. It was a major theme of my cheerily titled book “Suicide of the West.” So I’m happy to concede...

When we talk about people or a party being on the wrong side of history, it usually requires some hindsight, a position of informed advantage to see clearly missteps that were less clear at the time of events. Not so now, with today’s modern Republican Party and its utter cowardice...

My childhood pastor in Aliquippa, the late Rev. Asa W. Roberts Sr., used to often say at funerals, “The only way not to get old is to die young.” Both he and his father lived into their 90s. The same is true for my mother-in-law, Magnolia Combs of Brackenridge, who...

“Black arrests up, police recruits down” (July 20, TribLIVE) was one of the most positive editorials I have seen to address crime in black communities, if understood and taken in the right light. For the past 30 years I have been working with local police departments and local officials conducting...

For safety reasons, fire marshals control the number of people who can occupy a building at any one time. We’ve seen what happens when crowds get too large and a fire breaks out, causing panic and often death. So why not control the crowd illegally entering America? We control water...

Let’s think about priorities. Say that you live in one of the dangerous high-crime and poor-schooling neighborhoods of cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit or St. Louis. Which is most important to you: doing something about public safety and raising the quality of education or, as most black politicians do, focusing...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was disrupted by campaign workers demanding the same $15 per hour Sanders demands government force all employers to pay. It serves him right. Years ago, the activist group ACORN faced the same problem. After fighting for a higher minimum wage, they tried to convince a...

A recent Tribune-Review story (“Lower Burrell woman’s story personifies failures in Medicaid waiver program,” July 13, TribLIVE) and editorial (“Medicaid waivers real roller coaster,” July 16, TribLIVE) detailed a family’s difficulty securing home care for an aging loved one. The story equates the staffing struggles as a personification of “failures...

An updated statistical analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy of how the City of Pittsburgh stacks up against four comparable “benchmark cities” should prompt much, and necessarily robust, discussion among local public policy makers. Since 2004, the Pittsburgh think tank has, every three years, compared the erstwhile Steel...

In October 1950, as U.S. forces were reeling from hordes of Chinese troops who had intervened massively in the Korean War, a 5,000-man Turkish brigade arrived to halt an onslaught by six Chinese divisions. Said supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur: “The Turks are the hero of heroes. There is no...

A few years ago, my doctor recommended a routine heart exam. I would be paying for it out of pocket, since I had a high-deductible plan, so naturally I asked what it would cost. After a great deal of effort, I was told the list price was $5,500, and my...

If you were relieved, as I wanted to be, by President Donald Trump’s next-day repudiation of the “Send her back!” chant directed at a Somali-born congresswoman during his North Carolina rally, perk down. The vitriol that welled up so visibly and disturbingly in that crowd Wednesday night symbolized the unusual...

Last year, Pennsylvania took a major step forward in helping those addicted to opioids by becoming the first state in the nation to remove the prior authorization insurance requirement for medication-assisted treatment (MAT). Unfortunately, our state Legislature is now considering a measure that would set us back in helping those...

Paul Ryan is getting the hate treatment — again. The former GOP House speaker and 2012 vice presidential candidate is a unifying figure these days. Liberals have long despised him — unfairly in my mind. Anti-Trump conservatives are infuriated by his “surrender to Trumpism,” in the words of Charlie Sykes,...