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Featured Commentary category, Page 56

Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Dean Baker: Think Big Tech’s thousands of layoffs indicate a coming recession? Think again.
Amazon is laying off more than 18,000 workers. Salesforce is shedding 8,000, and Twitter has let go thousands more. While we should never minimize the difficulties of people facing an unexpected layoff, these announcements by major tech companies are not a large-scale tragedy for the American economy. What would be...
John M. Crisp: But what if Damar Hamlin had died?
Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, almost died Jan. 2. His heart stopped after a blow to his chest during a “Monday Night Football” game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Thanks to prompt attention by team trainers and paramedics, Hamlin survived, and America enjoyed a collective sigh of relief...
Scott S. Greenberger: Shared power used to be the norm in statehouses. Now it’s nearly extinct.
Terry Kilgore has been a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates since 1994. During that time, there have been four years in which the GOP controlled the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature. For two years, Democrats held complete control. In the other 23 years, Republicans...
Cal Thomas: Lisa Marie Presley and the other side of fame
“I’m gonna live forever, baby, remember my name” — (from “Fame”) The death at age 54 of Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, got me thinking again about the two-edged sword that is fame. Poems, books and movies have addressed fame, how some people lust after it and how it...
Hajar Yazdiha: Distortion of MLK’s words enables more, not less, racial division within American society
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is just the latest conservative lawmaker to misuse the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to judge a person on character and not race. In the protracted battle to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Roy, a Republican, nominated...
Robert Smith: Pa.’s ‘Republican’t’ problem
Pennsylvania Republicans have a representation problem, as evidenced by two recent events. In the recent campaign for governor, won by Democrat Josh Shapiro, certain “Republicans” publicly endorsed the Democrat for governor. Let us consider a few examples from Shapiro’s own webpage to see if we can identify the allure to...
Azadeh Masalehdan Block: An American-Iranian in Pittsburgh
Wait a minute … isn’t it supposed to be Iranian American? I was born in New Castle and we moved to Pittsburgh when I was about 3 years old. My family history dates back to 1799 in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Yet this isn’t the first impression many get of me when...
Isaiah Trumbull: Now’s the time to tackle the charter vs. public school problem
After having moved to Pittsburgh, my parents wanted what all parents want — to send their children to the best school possible. When I was in first grade, I attended the Environmental Charter School (ECS) in Regent Square, which at the time had 75 students per grade, because it looked...
Elwood Watson: What would Martin Luther King Jr. think of our America?
This month, as we celebrate Black history, millions of Americans will celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King was, without question, one of the greatest historical figures of the 20th century. He dedicated his life in an effort to ensure the ideals of life, liberty and the...
Aaron Smith: Pa.’s K-12 funding needs major reforms, not more money 
On the campaign trail, Josh Shapiro championed more money for public schools. Now that Democrats control Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives for the first time in over a decade, the state’s governor-elect will likely find ample support for that goal. “Everyone knows that our schools are chronically underfunded,” said state Rep....
Michael Reagan: Cleaning out Joe Biden’s dirty garage
Don’t worry, America. Big Media will never let Joe Biden get away with illegally taking classified documents from the White House in 2016 and stashing them at his office and in his garage next to his Corvette. The ace reporters at liberal places like The New York Times, CNN and...
POINT: Racial shifts in voting — what’s in the future?
Through a phenomenon called “linked fate,” small or marginalized groups tend to vote more as a unit rather than as individuals, assuming that without doing so they may not have a loud enough voice in the political system. However, exhaustion from a series of broken promises is breaking up these...
COUNTERPOINT: Education, crime drive Black voters to GOP
As another Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday approaches, our nation has much to celebrate as we strive toward MLK’s dream of a colorblind society. Since King’s assassination in 1968, our nation has elected and reelected its first African American president. We’ve also recently sworn in our first African American...
Gary Bayne and Josh Fleitman: Brackenridge chief’s killing demands stronger Pa. gun laws
Amid an avalanche of horrific acts of violence across Allegheny County over the past year, the Jan. 2 killing of Brackenridge police Chief Justin McIntire is yet another traumatic and high-profile reminder of the toll of gun violence on our communities. The chief’s family, the broader Brackenridge and law enforcement...
Peter Morici: Technology doesn’t displace humans — it creates new higher-paying jobs to replace those it destroys
Through the ages, pessimists have warned that new technologies spell doom. Naysayers warn robots will wipe out jobs and want to impose taxes to slow their progress. In a more service-based economy, artificial intelligence has a lot in common with robotics and with AI, the focus is increasingly spreading to...
Jase Graves: Escape from NY and Southwest Airlines
In the 1980s, I repeatedly watched a recorded copy of the film “Escape from New York” on my family’s Panasonic VCR — complete with tuning knobs the size of hubcaps. Little did I know that I would star in my own version of the movie (as a domesticated, tattoo-less and...
Nicholas Goldberg: Don’t turn away from the rising tide of political violence in America
On the Friday in October when David DePape burst into the house where 82-year-old Paul Pelosi was sleeping and allegedly beat him with a hammer, fracturing his skull, most Americans were shocked, horrified and disgusted. Pelosi was brutally assaulted in what prosecutors have called a politically motivated attempt to capture,...
Cal Thomas: Barn doors and horses
After months of ignoring the problem and demonstrably false claims by his Homeland Security secretary that the southern border is “secure,” President Biden is finally visiting the area this week as part of a trip to Mexico. Last week, the administration announced it would immediately begin turning away Cubans, Haitians...
Scott Sonenshein: Americans are taking more control over their work lives — because they have to
One thing that’s become clear in the past few tumultuous — and for many, traumatic — years is that it’s easy to feel like there is no control in our lives. Control is a basic psychological need that helps people feel like they have agency, from how they live to...
Nathan Benefield: On voter ID, trust the voters 
Last session, Pennsylvania lawmakers advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to require voter identification in elections. The state House and Senate must pass this measure again to put it on the ballot as a referendum, giving voters the final say. Regardless of which political party ends up controlling the state House...
Nicole Kraft: Sports broadcasters have a duty to report injuries responsibly — for Damar Hamlin, they passed the test
Injuries are an unfortunate part of any sport — none more so than in the NFL, where players can be felled in front of a TV audience in the tens of millions. Typically, when a player suffers an injury, the media cuts to commercial and returns with replays of the...
Joe Guzzardi: Midterm voters prefer status quo, which is bad news
Voters are, to understate their mood, disenchanted with Congress. Yet paradoxically, voters reelect, over and over, the same representatives they hold in dismally low esteem, consider ineffectual and out-of-touch. On average for 2022, about 80% of polling respondents disapproved of how congressional representatives handled their jobs. Many critics had previously...
Dominik Stecuła and Matthew Levendusky: Talking across the political aisle isn’t a cure-all — but it does help reduce hostility
Simmering tension in American politics came to a head two years ago, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. The failed insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, resulted in several deaths and injuries to almost 150 police...
Rob Perkins: Fair defense funding is a must for criminal justice reform
Our local system for providing counsel to poor people facing criminal charges violates people’s constitutional rights. The most pressing problem is chronic underfunding. Attorney compensation in particular hasn’t increased in 17 years. Predictably, unfair pay leads to underperformance. This should matter to all of us. When defense attorneys fail to...
Cal Thomas: Where have all the intellectuals gone?
The new slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives lacks something besides its slim majority and the battle over leadership positions. It lacks intellectual depth. The Reagan administration may have been the last one to challenge Americans to think for themselves and for that matter, just to think. Perhaps...


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