Featured Commentary category, Page 31
Brian Clancy: Taylor Swift encouraged us to do election research. But how?
I’m an independent who has voted for Democrats and Republicans over the years, and what I appreciated most about Taylor Swift’s presidential endorsement was that she didn’t tell people what to think or who to vote for. What she did do was outline a thoughtful process and share where she...
Dan DeBone: Time for legislative action on Pa.’s transportation and infrastructure crisis
As the State House and Senate return for their remaining voting days this year, one major piece of overdue legislation demands immediate attention — Act 89. Passed a decade ago, Act 89 was one of the most comprehensive transportation packages in Pennsylvania’s history. It provided funding for public transportation, highways,...
Point: When violent crime was at its worst, congressional action helped get the country back on track
By the early 1990s, the United States had experienced dramatic and unprecedented surges in crime, with the violent crime rate up 470% from 1961 and the murder rate up 92% from that year. Life in American cities was more dangerous than ever, and punishment was not fitting the crimes. While...
Counterpoint: The 1994 crime bill’s legacy — 30 years of failure
The 1994 crime bill, a misguided policy choice rooted in fear and misinformation, has inflicted irreparable harm on communities nationwide. By prioritizing punitive measures over proven prevention strategies, this legislation has fueled mass incarceration, eroded civil liberties and exacerbated systemic inequalities, all without demonstrably improving public safety. The architects and...
Josh Fleitman: I’m afraid of sending my daughter to school, angry that solutions are being ignored
I’m the proud new dad of a 9-month-old baby girl. Fatherhood has fundamentally changed the way my wife and I think and how we perceive the world. There’s the new levels of joy that we didn’t think possible: our hearts melting at her first giggle, celebrating her first word and...
Carl P. Leubsdorf: A personal reminiscence of Jimmy Carter
On a December afternoon nearly 50 years ago, I got a phone call from Jody Powell, the press secretary to a little-known former governor of Georgia who had this bizarre notion he would be the country’s next president. After filling me in on his boss’s plans for formally announcing his...
Carlos Sánchez: High-stakes politics have us seeking normalcy. But what if uncertainty and crisis are the norm?
Whether the attempted insurrection, the pandemic, the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump or something else, there has been enough craziness since 2020 to warrant social panic. We frequently utter phrases such as “We live in uncertain times,” “We are going through a moment of crisis” or “This is not...
Steven Hvozdovich: Don’t spread cancer-causing chemicals here. Or anywhere.
To say “our government should not poison us” is not exactly a bold statement. Yet, somehow, it is one we have to make. Let me explain: PFAS, better known as forever chemicals, are incredibly dangerous. They cause cancer, developmental delays in children, and can harm women’s fertility. Yet, despite these...
Bedassa Tadesse and Roger White: Immigrants are unsung heroes of global trade and value creation
In nearly every country that hosts foreign-born citizens, immigration emerges as a lightning rod for controversy. The economic realities of immigration, however, are far more complex than the negative sound bites suggest. Far from being a burden, as critics claim, immigrants play pivotal roles in driving innovation, enhancing productivity and...
Kathryn Anne Edwards: Make Social Security the model to fix the minimum wage
One of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on these days is it’s past time to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years. Vice President Kamala Harris supported President Joe Biden’s effort at the beginning of his administration to increase...
Richard Forno: Why Hezbollah went low-tech for communications
Electronic pagers across Lebanon exploded simultaneously on Sept. 17, killing 12 and wounding more than 2,700. The following day, another wave of explosions in the country came from detonating walkie-talkies. The attacks appeared to target members of the militant group Hezbollah. The pagers attack involved explosives planted in the communications...
Jonathan Zimmerman: How the University of Pennsylvania lost its way on free speech
I teach at the University of Pennsylvania, which is an equal-opportunity censor. It suppresses voices on the right and the left, even as it proclaims its commitment to free and open dialogue. That’s the sad takeaway of this month’s report by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which...
William Cooper: America’s 2-party system is failing us
Are Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump really the two best candidates for America’s most demanding and important job? Hardly. Trump tried to reverse the last election. And while Harris would be a reversion toward the mean — after an unfit Trump and an aging Joe Biden...
Carl P. Leubsdorf: Foreign policy will be the next president’s first priority
Former President Donald Trump has often told audiences the first things he would do as president is “close” the southern border and give orders to “drill, drill, drill” to increase domestic oil production. Vice President Kamala Harris says “it will be a day one priority to bring down prices.” But...
Barbara Clark Smith: To American revolutionaries, patriotism meant fair dealing with one another
When modern Americans call themselves patriots, they are evoking a sentiment that is 250 years old. In September 1774, nearly two years before the Declaration of Independence, delegates from 12 of the 13 Colonies gathered in the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They quickly hammered out a political, economic and...
Cal Thomas: Words and deeds
In 1995 when Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children and injuring hundreds more, President Bill Clinton blamed “promoters of paranoia,” which conservative talk radio hosts took as a slur against them. At the time I wrote that while there were many...
Kayla M. Williams: JD Vance’s dangerous push to further privatize the VA
When asked whether he would consider privatized health care for veterans, vice presidential candidate JD Vance replied, “I think I’d consider it.” While he acknowledged that there are areas where the Department of Veterans Affairs works well and rejected the idea of completely eliminating our second-largest federal agency, Vance doubled...
Patrick Starr: Trails are transportation
Trails and roads intersect in several ways, but from a transportation perspective they provide the same function. In many ways, trails are more accessible to a greater number of Pennsylvanians. Trails are beloved as a safe and comfortable place to move, to see, smell and experience the out-of-doors; to interact...
Barbara McQuade: Fighting Russian disinformation must be a team sport
Russian disinformation continues to poison U.S. politics via our social media platforms. As the tactics grow more sophisticated, our best defense may be building resilience rather than hoping to eliminate it. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced two law enforcement actions relating to a covert Russian disinformation campaign....
Kristina Becvar: National Voter Registration Day is more important than ever
Each election, millions of Americans miss out on the opportunity to cast their votes because they are not registered. Some may have moved; others may not realize they need to update their voter registration, while others missed the deadline. In polling, thousands of non-voters consistently cite registration issues as their...
Matthew Yglesias: What if Harris and Trump could ignore Pa.?
The 2024 election will almost certainly come down to Pennsylvania. But nothing is certain in life, and it’s not too soon — forgive me — to look forward to the 2028 election, when warmer, faster-growing, less-unionized states are key Electoral College battlegrounds. In fact, according to Nate Silver’s forecasts, the...
Mickey Edwards: When considering foreign policy, there is only one choice for president
Every U.S. presidential election plays to three separate audiences: American voters, America’s allies and America’s enemies. For the most part, voters focus on questions of domestic policy, but the focus of the other two audiences is dramatically different. For our allies, it’s a question of America’s reliability as a partner...
Susan McWilliams Barndt: Do you remember what politics were like without Donald Trump? My students don’t.
Every year, I ask my political science students, “What is your earliest political memory?” I pose the question to figure out what political and cultural moments have shaped them. Over the years, their answers have served mainly to help me think about the mix of perspectives in my classroom. But...
Point: Tim Walz wants policies to empower rural Americans
After rural voters turned out big for Donald Trump, a narrative emerged that rural America was made up of majority White communities who used to vote reliably Democratic but had shifted right. The emergence of Tim Walz and JD Vance in this election cycle offers a chance for a deeper...
Counterpoint: JD Vance speaks for rural America
Far too often, rural Americans feel ignored by presidential campaigns. While elites in Washington, New York and Los Angeles generate the headlines, focusing primarily on the two coasts, Americans outside major cities continue to fly under the radar. This needs to change, and the 2024 election could be the turning...
