Featured Commentary category, Page 50

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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....

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:...

The world economy is in the doldrums, pessimism is rife around the world and most young people, according to one survey, believe climate change means the end of human life on Earth. Yet, a better future beckons, if we can only begin to look outside ourselves and even beyond our...

When East Germans defied Soviet domination with the Leipzig march in 1989, they were chanting an unlikely slogan. “Gorbi, Gorbi!” they shouted in a celebratory tone, referring to then-Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. The brave demonstrators were hungry for democracy and freedom. Yet, they chose to voice their ideals using...